Gwendolyn Midlo Hall

Who is Gwendolyn Midlo Hall?

Gwendolyn Midlo Hall is a prominent historian and public intellectual who focuses on the history of slavery in the Caribbean, Latin America, Louisiana, Africa and the African Diaspora in the Americas. Discovering extensive European colonial documents in Louisiana, she created a database of records describing over 100,000 enslaved Africans. It has become a prominent resource for historical and genealogical research. In addition to earning recognition in academia, Hall has been featured in the New York Times, People Magazine, ABC News, BBC, and other popular outlets for her contributions to scholarship, genealogy, and the critical reevaluation of the history of slavery.

Midlo Hall is an award-winning author and Professor Emerita of Latin American and Caribbean History, Rutgers University, New Jersey. Since 2010 she is Professor of History at Michigan State University.

Her work, Africans in Colonial Louisiana: The Development of Afro-Creole Culture in the Eighteenth Century, studied the "ethnic" origins of enslaved Africans brought to Louisiana over time as well as the process of creolization which created new cultures. She changed the way in which several related disciplines are researched and taught, adding to scholarly understanding of the diverse origins of cultures throughout the Americas.